SLEEP NO MORE

by L. T. C. Rolt

  Hawley Bank lies high above the Severn and almost within the shadow of the Wrekin. It is hard to believe that, where all the might of the Luftwaffe had failed, anything in this quiet Shropshire countryside should so effectually succeed in forcing a breach in Mr George Frimley’s formidable mental defences. Yet this was the case. He has not yet recovered from this assault upon his complacency. Probably he never will. It is an affront to his self-esteem which he prefers not to discuss. Consequently it is not at all easy to discover from him what actually did happen at Hawley Bank.

  George was never a man to let the grass grow under his feet. After a brief survey of his wrecked cupolas and core ovens on that fateful morning he drove to the nearest telephone which would function and put a high priority call through to London. He held important war contracts, and his terse conversation set in motion a complex bureaucratic mechanism of telephone calls and urgent minutes between the War Office, the Ministry of Supply and the Office of Works. As a result it was suggested that Messrs Herbert Frimley and Company should, as a temporary measure, occupy the premises of the defunct Hawley Bank Ironworks in Shropshire. He was assured that local labour would be forthcoming and that billets would be found in the neighbourhood for his ‘key men’. Accordingly, one bright, early spring day, George Frimley, accompanied by his Foundry Manager, Arthur Clegg, set off from Birmingham to inspect the Hawley Bank Works, and in a very short time (for George is a fast and capable driver) we may imagine the long, black car crossing the Severn and sweeping up the steep hill beyond. It is easy to visualise the scene; the hanging woods on the hillsides misted with the first tentative buds of spring, cloud shadows sweeping over the broad back of the Wrekin and, far below, the silver stream of Severn threading her narrow gorge. But the pair were too engrossed in their business to notice such things. After thirty years in the trade, there was little that Arthur Clegg did not know about the Midlands iron industry, past or present. Soon after they left Birmingham he had confessed that he had never been to Hawley Bank, but suspected that they would find it ‘an awkward, old-fashioned sort of place’. Pressed to give his reasons for this belief, he went on to tell the other all he knew of the history of the Hawley Bank Ironworks. George did not find this recital very encouraging.

  They were one of the oldest ironworks in the district, it appeared, having been founded by two brothers, Amos and Josiah Darley, in the eighteenth century. They were pioneers in their day, these brothers; perfecting methods of puddling iron, and smelting it with coke on their Shropshire hill-side while their fellow Ironmasters farther east were still feeding the remnants of the Forest of Wyre into their furnaces and laboriously hammering the excess carbon out of the iron under cumbrous, water-driven tilt hammers. The business had remained in the Darley family for generations, but like many pioneers, they failed to keep abreast of the times and soon lost the initial lead which their ancestors had won. By the 1870s only one furnace remained in blast, and by the turn of the century that, too, went cold, no longer able to compete with larger and more modern plant elsewhere. The Hawley Bank Works became exclusively a jobbing foundry; still a prosperous little business with a good reputation for sound work, but old-fashioned in its methods and no longer a great name in the trade. Such was the inheritance of Josiah IV, seventh and last generation of the Darley family, in 1910.

  This last Josiah was, it seems, ‘a bit of a character’, in fact George Frimley had to cut short his Manager’s flow of anecdotes on the subject somewhat brusquely. But not before the picture had emerged of a cantankerous and eccentric old bachelor, living in the past, intensely conservative and equally intensely proud and jealous of the family tradition. Until the end of the First World War, this last Josiah remained in sole control at Hawley Bank, and the relationship existing between him, his works and his workpeople more closely resembled that of a traditional country squire to his estate than an industrialist. It was a wonder that Josiah never married, for there was no other branch of the Darley family to succeed him. Of course there were the usual tales about his having been crossed in love in his youth. However that may be, there can be little doubt that the knowledge that he was the last of his line, and that with his death a link which had survived the whole course of the Industrial Revolution would break, must have preyed upon his mind.

  Through the war years the works did well, but by the time peace returned, old Josiah had aged considerably, not only in body but in mind. He was, in fact, nearly eighty and, though still remarkably hale physically, he was subject to mental aberrations and lapses for which ‘eccentricity’ was now too mild a word. Nevertheless, everyone believed that only death would end Josiah’s reign at Hawley Bank, so that there was consternation in the works when, in 1920, he suddenly installed a Manager. Josiah would still potter round his works every day, but from then on he practically ceased to take an active interest in the business.

  The history of Druce, the new Manager, appears to have been wrapped in mystery. No one knew where he came from, and Clegg said he had never heard of anyone of that name connected with the trade, at any rate in the Midlands. No less mysterious was the way in which the old man, who never left his native Shropshire if he could possibly avoid it, ever got hold of him. In the light of subsequent events it seems more probable that it was Druce who got hold of old Josiah. Certainly this sudden introduction of a stranger to such a position, when there must have been several men in the works who might have filled the post, seems quite out of key with Josiah’s character. But wherever Druce may have come from, it would certainly seem that he knew his job. In this respect, at least, he was no impostor. But he was utterly ruthless. In place of the old man’s paternal rule, Druce at once introduced at Hawley Bank a new regime that was as coldly efficient as it was impersonal. Whereas under old Josiah the workmen were always men—Harry and Tom and Dick—no matter how roundly he might curse them, they were merely numbers to Druce. Time-honoured methods and routines were swept away, and the old day-work system was replaced by keen piece-work rates. There was nothing novel in this, but it was new to Hawley Bank. Many of the old hands left, and there were new faces in the foundry. Others appealed to old Josiah, but Druce seems to have dominated him no less successfully than the rest of the works, for in face of these deputations he would only curse and wave them away impatiently with his stick. He continued to make his daily circuit of the works, but if he noticed the changes that were taking place, he gave no sign.

  Then one day the old man failed to appear. Rumour and conjecture were rife. Some said he was ill, others that he was dead. Both were wrong. Old Josiah had disappeared, and was never seen again. He lived alone, and his housekeeper, who came in daily, was apparently the last person to see him. After she had cleared away his evening meal she had looked into the sitting-room to find out if there was anything he wanted before she went home, and saw him sitting at the fireside. He appeared to be in his usual health and spirits. But investigation showed that his familiar rusty bowler and heavy stick were missing from their accustomed place in the hall, so that he must have gone out again later that night.

  Naturally, Josiah’s disappearance was a nine days’ wonder. Copyholt Mere and five miles of the Severn were dragged, but no trace of him was ever found. Soon there was another topic to keep tongues wagging, for it transpired that the old man had left his property, together with his private fortune, which was not inconsiderable, to Druce upon condition that he changed his name to Darley by deed poll. Naturally, Druce was not loath to comply, but, from the moment of this compliance, luck seemed to desert him.

  It is clear that Druce (or Darley, as we must now call him), must have antagonised his workmen. That he was heartily disliked there can be no doubt, and this dislike culminated in a strike in the foundry which even Darley could not break. Instead, he had to import out-of-works from the Black Country. Doubtless it was owing to this unskilled labour that Hawley Bank lost its reputation for good-quality castings, and that there was an extraordinary series of minor accidents in the foundry
—moulds going up, probably through the cores not being properly dried, and men burnt. This gave the shop a bad reputation, and there was more labour trouble. This state of affairs culminated in a more than minor accident when a big engine-bed casting blew up suddenly when the pouring had almost been completed, and, as a result, three men were lost in circumstances which Clegg preferred not to describe in detail. There was a sequel to this a few days later when, in the same shop, Darley, alias Druce, was found hanging from the hook of the overhead crane. It was suicide, of course.

  So far as is known, no relatives ever came forward, but even had they done so they would have gained very little, for it was found that the Darley fortune had almost ceased to exist, while the works had become a liability. For, apart from its bad reputation, this was the slump year of 1929. Hawley Bank Ironworks were abandoned.

  ‘I expect we shall find,’ concluded Clegg, ‘that the scrap merchants have had most of the more easily movable plant, but apart from this and twelve years of neglect most likely it’ll look much the same as it did when Darley or Druce (whichever you like to call him) left it.’

  By the time Clegg had brought his story to a close they had practically reached their destination. Following the directions given to him in the last village they had passed, George Frimley slowed down as he sighted a pair of crumbling brick gate-pillars on his right, and presently swung the car off the road and on to the trackway they guarded. It had been a metalled road, but now it was grass-grown except for a narrow central strip which was evidently still in use as a footpath. But presently even this slender evidence of usage veered sharply away into the woods to leave the track untrodden. The car bounced uncomfortably on the uneven surface, and the long tentacles of encroaching briars clawed at the windows. George was more concerned at the rough treatment his shining car was receiving than by the melancholy history of Hawley Bank Ironworks.

  ‘Blast this bloody war,’ he swore. ‘Whoever in his right mind would think of trying to start a business in this God-forsaken place? Still, that’s the Ministry’s concern, not mine. If we can’t do the job in Birmingham then there’s nothing else for it. At least Jerry won’t find us here in a hurry. . . . This road will have to be made up for a start,’ he went on, slowing the car to a walking-pace.

  Over the tree-tops appeared a tall, square chimney-stack. Even at this distance it was apparent that its old weather-mellowed brickwork was sadly in need of pointing. Halfway up the shaft a small bush had taken root. How many years had passed since last it had smudged the clear air above it with smoke? Smoke is to a chimney as leaves are to a tree, and a derelict stack has always the gaunt, forlorn appearance of a dead tree. A moment more, and the car debouched into a clearing wherein lay the Hawley Bank Ironworks. George stopped the car, and the two men got out. The building nearest to them had obviously been an engine- and boiler-house, for not only did the chimney stack rise from the end wall, but the nose of an old egg-ended boiler protruded through the masonry. Walking through the doorway (the door itself had disappeared) they discovered a great beam engine. George was tall, but the enormous cylinder towered above him, while overhead in the gloom of the higher galleries, the ponderous beam hung poised at the top of its stroke like some titanic grasshopper petrified when about to spring. A faint, stale smell of cylinder oil still pervaded the building, and from a nail on a wall that had once been whitewashed hung an old and dirty cloth cap meshed over with a fine net of cobwebs. Obviously the engine had been out of use for a considerable time—since the last blast-furnace was shut down, Clegg conjectured, for it was evidently a blowing engine. A student of engineering history would have been deeply interested, but the past meant nothing to George who merely expressed surprise that the engine had not been dismantled for scrap years before. Clegg guessed that old Josiah’s eccentricity had spared it during the previous war, while when the works closed in 1929, the price of scrap would not have paid for the cost of dismantling.

  They walked out of the engine-house, passed the rusty ruin of the last blast-furnace, and entered the foundry. This was a substantial brick building, and except for the fact that most of the glass in the iron-framed, round-headed windows and in the skylights was broken, it appeared to be in unexpectedly good repair. Doubtless it had been renovated and improved during Druce’s brief regime. It consisted of one lofty and capacious bay over the moulding-floor, and two side aisles, one of which housed the cupolas and the other a range of core ovens. One large cupola remained. Clegg tapped its rusty steel side with an iron bar he had found, peered into its throat with the aid of a torch, and expressed the opinion that if it was re-lined it might be put into service.

  ‘Phew!’ he added, withdrawing his head. ‘Doesn’t it stink, though. Dead bird or something must have dropped in from the top.’

  Brick foundations and a circular hole in the roof were evidence that a second and smaller cupola had been removed. Some of the core-oven doors were missing and, except for a pile of old wooden patterns, dusty and cracked, all the more readily portable equipment, such as mould-boxes and ladles, had gone. But whoever had dismantled Hawley Bank Works had not considered it worth his while to remove any of the heavier plant. Even the travelling crane still hung overhead. It was of the old manual traversing type and bore upon an oval, cast plate the legend ‘Josiah Darley and Company, Ironfounders, Hawley Bank Works, 1898.’

  The two men padded to and fro, their footfalls silenced by the black sand of the moulding-floor which filled the air with a pungent, acrid odour. It was so quiet that when a cloud darkened the sun and the wind stirred and rattled some loose steel sheet on the external charging gallery round the big cupola, both stopped and started involuntarily. Clegg walked across to the small doorway beside the cupola, peered up at the gallery, and then returned, looking rather shamefaced.

  ‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn there was someone hanging around outside.’

  George grunted, but said nothing.

  They continued their examination in silence. A sudden storm of hail beat upon the roof. The noise it made seemed prodigious, and when it ceased as abruptly as it had begun it seemed to leave the stillness the more intense, even though it was now punctuated by the stealthy crepitation of water dripping from broken downspouts and shattered lights. Now it was George’s turn to stride suddenly across the foundry to the doorway by the cupola and look out.

  ‘What’s up?’ called Clegg.

  ‘Nothing,’ said George.

  ‘There’s someone hanging around outside,’ Clegg repeated. ‘Some nosey parker from the village, most likely.’

  But if this was so, their watcher moved with remarkable stealth and circumspection, betraying himself by neither sight nor sound.

  ‘There’s one thing that strikes me as odd about this place,’ Clegg went on.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the other.

  In answer, Clegg pointed with the toe of his shoe to one of the numerous holes which pitted the sandy floor.

  ‘Rats,’ said George laconically.

  Clegg looked doubtful and wrinkled his brows as he idly kicked sand into the hole and stamped it down with his foot.

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed at length, ‘but it’s the first time I’ve ever known rats do that—reckon the sand’s too soft and they don’t like the smell of it.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, whatever it is, it could be a nuisance. Better put rat poison down. We need some new sand, too.’

  He picked up a handful from the floor, squeezed it is his palm, looked at the cake, impressed with the marks of his fingers, crumbled it and let it fall. The sun came out again, throwing a sharply etched pattern of broken roof-lights on the dark floor. They walked round the outside of the building discussing the structural repairs that would be necessary and the installation of new equipment, together with whatever might be salvaged from the wreckage at Brookend. Though neither man would have entertained such a project in normal circumstances, both agreed that it would be quite feasible to re-open the foundry. As they strolled back
to the car, still talking technicalities, the sun was fast setting over Wales. The keen evening air was filled with the scent of decayed leaves from the surrounding woods where, in mist and purple shadow, night was already advancing. The ironworks, too, were now in shadow. Only at the top of the tall chimney-stack did the crumbling brickwork glow red in the last of the sunlight. Wiping his scrupulously polished shoes on the grass, George had a final look round. The prospect apparently gave him no pleasure. He shivered involuntarily, turned up the collar of his opulent camel-hair overcoat, and got into the driving-seat. The starter whirred, the wall of the engine-house echoed the slamming of car doors, and the long, black saloon crept away through the woods.

  As the shadows came out of the woods, so stillness and solitude returned to Hawley Bank, and only footprints in the sand of the moulding-floor remained to tell of its interruption. But not for long. As has already been remarked, George Frimley never wasted time. A few days later, two lorries roared up the track through the woods, one carrying a gang of men and the other a light road roller. Soon the track had been re-surfaced with blast-furnace slag cut from the old grass-grown tip. When these pioneers had done their work more lorry loads of men and materials appeared; builders, bricklayers, painters, glaziers and labourers; steel trusses and joists, corrugated sheeting, bricks, sand, bags of cement, gravel. Long-disused paths about the works became muddy tracks between piles of scaffolding, planks and other paraphernalia. All day long the clearing echoed the fussy tuff-tuff-tuff of small engines driving hoists and concrete-mixers. A cupola, salvaged from Brookend Foundry, was installed in place of the missing one, while the highly skilled work of building a new firebrick lining into the big cupola proceeded slowly. The first builder fell sick, had to give up the job, and it was difficult to find anyone to replace him. However, along with the other structural work, the job was eventually completed, and as the builders moved out, Brookend Foundry began to move in; mould-boxes, patterns, modern foundry machines that Hawley Bank had never seen, and, finally, furniture and equipment for the new office building which had been erected near the engine-house. New faces appeared in the surrounding villages; the local bus company arranged special morning and evening services to and from Hawley Bank. The ponderous machine that George Frimley had set in motion that March morning with a telephone call to London had done its work, and Hawley Bank Foundry was re-born. One hot July day, for the first time in twelve years, the mouth of the big cupola belched pungent reddish-tinted smoke. Later, the smoke cleared and only the shimmering sky above the squat, steel cylinder betrayed the intense heat within.